Plaque

We heard that there was a plaque on the Sandemanian Chapel where Michael Faraday was an Elder. We could see nothing on the outside of the building which has been converted into a BT telephone exchange. So we contacted BT, and Keith Lovell of their Connected Earth very kindly arranged a visit for us. On the day Pagget Lewis (helpfully pointing in our picture) and some of his colleagues were extremely helpful and located the floor plaque for us, and confirmed that there is supposed to be another, more substantial plaque, on the wall marking the location of the preaching platform, and unveiled by Lord Kelvin. Given all the electrical equipment installed there are strict H&S rules in place and it is not easy to examine all the wall space. So, in summary, we are delighted to have captured this plaque but disappointed not to have the other one.

And then: Via Facebook Comments Peter Berthoud of Discovering London told us that the other plaque is now in the Royal Institution's collection. It used to be mounted above a public telephone in their Albermarle Street reception area. When this pay-phone was removed the plaque was moved into the object store. We thought that was the end of the story but then we were contacted by John Chenery of BT telling us that BT's online digital archive had a photo of the plaque (www.bt.com/btdigitalarchives/ finding number: TCB 417/E 9368) and we use that image courtesy of BT Archives. Wonderful - thanks to everyone who assisted in this hunt.